A suit charging former
President Bill Clinton, U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and two associates
with having conspired to subvert campaign finance laws was assigned to Los
Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz yesterday following the
disqualification of two other judges.

Peter F. Paul, a
businessman and former associate of comic book illustrator Stan Lee, claims
that he contributed $2 million to Hillary Clinton’s successful campaign in New York last year, but that the
contributions were never reported. He alleges that he was induced to make the
donations by promises of a future business relationship with Bill Clinton,
which never materialized.

Paul said he fears that
he will be indicted on election-law charges as a result of the allegedly
unreported contributions. He is currently under indictment on unrelated charges
of manipulating the stock of now-bankrupt Stan Lee Media, Inc.

Paul is represented by
Larry G. Klayman and Sterling E. Norris of Judicial Watch, a conservative legal
organization that has filed numerous suits against the Clintons and their
associates.

The suit was originally
assigned to Judge Ernest Hiroshige, but Klayman and Norris filed an affidavit
of prejudice under Code of Civil Procedure Sec. 170.6. Hiroshige is an
appointee of Jerry Brown and a longtime member of the Japanese-American
Democratic Club.

The case was reassigned
to Judge David Workman, who was a member of the Los Angeles County Republican
Central Committee for six years prior to his election to the bench in 1980. But
Workman was “papered” last week by attorneys from the Los Angeles firm of Smith Kaufman
LLP, which represents David Rosen, a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The case now goes to
Munoz, who, like Hiroshige, is a Democrat appointed by Brown. Munoz does not
list any affiliations with party groups in his biography.

The former president
hasn’t yet appeared in the case. David Kendall of Williams & Connolly, who
represented him at his impeachment trial, is representing Hillary Clinton, in
association with the Bay Area firm of Remcho, Johansen, & Purcell, which
often represents the Democratic Party and its officials.

Rosen, Hillary Clinton,
and Aaron Tonken, the producer of a Hollywood fundraising event which Paul claims to have
underwritten, have demurred to the complaint. They argue that the allegations,
even if true, don’t amount to a valid claim, and that even if they did, the suit
is preempted by federal election laws.